Research Grants

I am currently PI on an ESRC project (2022-26) focusing on the historical (colonial) legacies and contemporary realities of those involved in manually handling human waste in drains, pit latrines, septic tanks and sewers in Bangladesh and India. Further details can be found here.

Prior to this, I was PI on the following two projects:

• British Council Going Global Partnership (2023-24) alongside the Centre for Law and Justice, Pakistan on barriers and opportunities to further education and employment among minority women and girls (the daughters of sanitation workers) in Lahore.
• GCRF-QR project (2019-21) on gender, caste and urban sanitation in India and Bangladesh at the University of Sheffield.

During and shortly after my PhD, I was also a Research Associate/Fellow in four interdisciplinary projects:

• BMGF Funded 'Climate and Costs in Urban Sanitation Project' (OPP1153400), University of Leeds
• British Academy-Funded 'Safeguarding the "Last 100 Metres" in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania' (GF160004), University of Manchester (TUOM).
• ESPA-Funded EcoPoor Project - ‘Institutions for the Urban Poor’s Access to Ecosystem Services: A Comparison of Green and Blue Structures in Bangladesh and Tanzania’ (NE-L001616-1), TUOM.
• ESRC-DFID Funded ClimUrb Project - 'Climate Change and Urban Poverty in Bangladesh' (RES-167-25-0510), TUOM.

External Roles

I am a member of the Editorial Board for Contemporary South Asia, and currently sit on a global advisory board on sanitation work, convened by the Initiative for Sanitation Workers, including the ILO, WHO and WaterAid. Linked to this, in 2021 colleagues (in India, the UK and US) and I organised a free, online, open-access 'Sanitation Workers Forum' bringing together 60 speakers and 350 participants from 38 countries. All videos can be found here.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested to receive enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in/working on the following broad areas: - Waste and 'cleaning' work (focusing especially on intersections of caste, religion, gender, class, race) - Colonial infrastructural legacies (especially around water and sanitation, and sanitation labour) - Hazardous and exploitative labour practices (including, for example, tea gardens, brick kilns, rice mills, construction)